A Facebook hoax claims it is restricting your News Feed to 25 friends

Facebook’s
CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
REUTERS/Charles
Platiau/Pool

• There’s a viral Facebook post making the rounds that
  claims the News Feed is restricting what you see to just 25
  friends.
• Spoiler alert: It’s just not true.

No, Facebook is not restricting the content you see on your News
Feed to just 25 or 26 friends.

Over the last few months, a hoax has been making the rounds on
the social network. It claims, in essence, that Facebook has
implemented an algorithm change that means you will only see
posts from a select few of your friends. Anyone else is flat out
of luck.

The hoax encourages users to combat this by copying and pasting a
faux-informative message about the “change” — and then asking
users’ friends to reply to the post.

Here’s one example Business Insider has seen (the wording often
varies slightly):

Hello Friends – I’m jumping on the bandwagon
too….Fighting this Facebook algorithm change, because I’m
noticing I am not seeing so many of my friends posts. Here is how
to avoid hearing from the same 26 FB friends and nobody else.
This post explains why we don’t see all posts from our friends.
Funny, I thought if I followed you on Facebook I would see what
you post. Not anymore…..

Your newsfeed recently shows only posts from the same few
people, about 25, repeatedly the same, because Facebook has a new
algorithm….

Their system chooses the people who will read your posts.
However I would like to choose for myself, therefore, I ask you
all a favor- if you are reading this message leave me a quick
comment, a “hey” or sticker, whatever you want, so you will
appear in my newsfeed please!

Otherwise Facebook chooses who to show me and I don’t need
Facebook to choose my friends. Please copy and paste on your wall
so you can have more interaction with all your contacts and
bypass the system. That’s why we don’t see all posts from our
friends.

Hold your finger down anywhere on this post and “copy” will
pop up. Click “copy”. Then go to your page, start a new post on
your page, then put your finger anywhere in the blank field.
“Paste” will pop up and click on it to paste. Thank you
all!

Variations of this hoax have been circulating since at least
February 2018,
and Facebook comprehensively debunked it at the time. But
that clearly didn’t halt its spread.

The problem is that by the time a fooled user realizes it’s total
hookum, it’s too late — they’ve already copy-pasted it, sharing
it with their friends, allowing it to keep going viral across the
social network.

That said, there is an extremely convoluted and twisted kernel of
truth in here — Facebook’s algorithm does make judgement about
which of your friends it thinks you want to see content from, and
then prioritizes them in your News Feed. And engaging with these
friends’ posts (and them engaging with your posts) will make them
appear more frequently.

If you feel you are seeing only a limited number of posts from a
limited number of people, there is a tried-and-true trick that
will give you a different view of your News Feed: have it show
you the “Most Recent” posts rather than its default, “Top
Stories.”

To do this on the desktop click on “News Feed” in the left-hand
column and then on “Most Recent.”

This view of the News Feed is harder to find on the mobile app.
First click on the “three lines” symbol (next to the
notifications bell symbol). Then click on “See More” then on
“Most Recent.”

But the “facts” this hoax claims, and its purported fix? Dead
wrong.

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